Why Media Training Matters

Preparation is the key to successfully responding to the media during a crisis.

You are standing in front of a bank of microphones and wall of TV cameras. Your words and how you express them will influence how the public, elected officials and employees view your organization. A lot is riding on your performance.

Even though the stakes are large, many spokespersons wing it. They enter the pit without any training and often without a realistic appreciation of the chaos they will encounter. They are entering the lion’s den as bait.

“If crises are opportunities to demonstrate an organization’s core values and enhance their reputation, then preparation and continuous practice are essential.”

Media training is intended to prepare spokespersons — and their bosses — to deal with the news media, cope with the pressures of social and digital media and manage the flow of information to a variety of external and internal audiences.

If crises are opportunities to demonstrate an organization’s core values and enhance their reputation, then preparation and continuous practice are essential. Here is what media training should cover:

  • Building rapport with reporters. Spokespersons should understand the news media’s role and how they do their job. Respecting deadlines, providing information in a timely manner and avoiding spin are ways that spokespersons build a positive relationship with reporters so they work with you instead of looking for ways to go around you.
  • Understanding the value of sound bites. Reporters want facts. They also want great quotes. Spokespersons need to deliver both. An interview clip on a TV broadcast frequently lasts 10 seconds, which means there isn’t time to offer a lengthy explanation. You need a short, quotable sentence or phrase that conveys your key message. This takes art, but mostly it takes the hard work to identify the most important fact and convert into a sound bite.
  • Knowing when not to take the bait. Good reporters have techniques to get you off message. Spokespersons must learn the skills to stay on message. They have to become like actors who perform their lines on cue without getting sidetracked by someone coughing loudly in the audience. Spokespersons also need to know how to redirect a reporter’s question to stay on message.
  • Projecting the right emotion. The last thing you want is a spokesperson who smirks while describing a layoff. How you look when you speak speaks louder than what you actually say. Media training, which involves simulated interviews on camera, helps spokespersons see their posture, facial expressions and hand motions, which can reinforce the key message or distract from it.
  • Conveying confidence. It takes skill for a spokesperson to convey confidence in the midst of chaos. Media training provides tips on how to maintain composure and project a command of the facts, even if they are incomplete when you brief reporters. Confidence is critical to give key audiences — whether it’s an adjoining neighborhood or an organization’s own employees — reassurance that the problem causing the crisis is being addressed with their safety in mind.
  • Performing under stress. It’s one thing to talk a good game and another to play one. Media training puts spokespersons under the lens of a camera so you can see how well you handle a question out of left field or new information that is shown to you without prior warning on a smartphone. Stress-testing spokespersons give them a taste of what a real crisis would be like. It separates the wannabes from the can-do spokespersons.

Effective media training isn’t like a lifetime vaccine. You need to undergo it more than once. Experienced spokespersons routinely tune up before a known major event or periodically just to keep their skills at the sharpest edge.